Minor Rant :Knowing and Doing: August 2009 Archives

This actually made me somewhat sad. I remember meeting people from other colleges in UP (College of Arts and Letters etc) who really dreaded taking Math 1 and Math2 , the basic math course of the University of the Philippines General Education program, then they instituted RGEP (forgot what this means)  wherein students got to choose the basic or general education courses they took. I feel this is contributing to the lack of whole roundness of UP grads, and in a way is leading to a decline, We often hear “I’m just not good in math etc” but the reality is if we try hard enough  we can overcome our fear of math and other subjects. The truth is that I find math hard , but I do not let that fear control me. RGEP was a way for people to evade, sometimes I fear for our future.

If only those people knew that many computer scientists feel the same way. We are in awe. At one level, we feel like this is way over our heads, too. How could these programmers done so much with so little? Wow. But then we take a breath and realize that we have the tools we need to dig in and understand how this stuff works. Having some training and experience, we can step back from our awe and approach the code in a different way. Like a scientist. And anyone can have the outlook of a scientist.
via Knowing and Doing: August 2009 Archives.

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Now Playing: Gone For Good by The Shins

Gone For Good
by The Shins
Untie me, I’ve said no vows
The train is getting way too loud
I gotta leave here my girl
Get on with my lonely life

Just leave the ring on the rail
For the wheels to nullify
Until this turn in my head
I let you stay and you paid no rent
I spent twelve long months on the lam
That’s enough sitting on the fence
For the fear of breaking dams
I find a fatal flaw
In the logic of love
And go out of my head
You love a sinking stone
That’ll never elope
So get used to the lonesome
Girl, you must atone some
Don’t leave me no phone number there
It took me all of a year
To put the poison pill to your ear
But now I stand on honest ground, on honest ground
You want to fight for this love
But honey you cannot wrestle a dove
So baby it’s clear
You want to jump and dance
But you sat on your hands
And lost your only chance
Go back to your hometown
Get your feet on the ground
And stop floating around
I find a fatal flaw
In the logic of love
And go out of my head
You love a sinking stone
That’ll never elope
So get used to used to the lonesome
Girl, you must atone some
Don’t leave me no phone number there

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rePost: Excellent Ranty Advice from Paul Wilmott:Paul Wilmott's Blog: Copulas and Cults

American model and television host Michele Merkin.
Image via Wikipedia

Can’t say I blame him.  People generally hate being different in a real way. The way I observe things, it seems most people just want to stand-out in the center of attention kind of way and not in the different trailblazing kind of way that I admire!
What you think of as just you job consumes probably from 2-10 hours of a 24 hour day. If you add in all the stuff you do because of work like commuting/preparing reports outside office hours/even shopping for office clothes/stuff etc . You can’t deny that what you call as just your job consists of the majority of your usable waking hours.
We need to take charge of our lives and have pride in what we do, and as human beings we have the capacity to think and analyze complex stuff.  Why are we not doing exactly that?
As for the picture, for somer strange reason Zemanta thinks it’s relevant!

But that’s only part of the problem. Far more serious, because it extends to all of finance not just to a single model, is the poor education that people get in university financial engineering programs and also the blind-following-the-blind behaviour that is so common throughout the industry.
The copula model is not robust to changes in model assumptions. Black-Scholes is. Did you know that? Or maybe I’m wrong. Would you like to know the truth?
Yes, I could tell you. I could spoonfeed you. You’ve got used to being spoonfed, haven’t you? But you’re passing the buck there, putting an awful lot of responsibility on my shoulders. I can cope, as I’m sure David Li can cope. But you’re a big boy/girl now, you should be able to think for yourself. Isn’t that part of your job description?
It’s getting quite tedious me telling people to get off their backsides and test the models for themselves. Don’t believe anything I say, don’t believe anything Nassim, also quoted in the Salmon article, says. Question everything. Switch your brains back on.
Paul Wilmott’s Blog: Copulas and Cults.

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-Happy Square Root Day!-GMANews.TV – 3/3/09: Math fans to observe Square Root Day – Odds and Ends – Official Website of GMA News and Public Affairs – Latest Philippine News – BETA

function Sqrt[z] in the complex plane
Image via Wikipedia

3/3/09: Math fans to observe Square Root Day
03/03/2009 | 08:58 AM
REDWOOD CITY, California — Dust off the slide rules and recharge the calculators. Square Root Day is upon us.
The math-buffs’ holiday, which only occurs nine times each century, falls on Tuesday — 3/3/09 (for the mathematically challenged, three is the square root of nine).
GMANews.TV – 3/3/09: Math fans to observe Square Root Day – Odds and Ends – Official Website of GMA News and Public Affairs – Latest Philippine News – BETA.

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